


The Blitz

by elusive_ellipsis



Series: Half-Decent Omens [5]
Category: Good Omens (TV), Good Omens - Neil Gaiman & Terry Pratchett
Genre: Crowley In A Church (Good Omens), Ineffable Husbands (Good Omens), Ineffable Idiots (Good Omens), Scene: The Blitz (Good Omens), The Blitz
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2020-09-18
Updated: 2020-09-18
Packaged: 2021-03-07 21:01:12
Rating: Not Rated
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 1
Words: 2,134
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/26524123
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/elusive_ellipsis/pseuds/elusive_ellipsis
Summary: An alternative version of the scene during the Blitz from Good Omens, with a little more of a general vibe of disaster.
Relationships: Aziraphale & Crowley (Good Omens), Aziraphale/Crowley (Good Omens)
Series: Half-Decent Omens [5]
Series URL: https://archiveofourown.org/series/1757263
Comments: 1
Kudos: 9





	The Blitz

The sun had long since set when Aziraphale made his way into the church. It was poorly lit - most of London was, what with its citizens' desire not to be bombed, but the angel walked confidently, as if he knew something no one else did. In his left hand he carried a leather case. Standing at the altar of the church were two men, one leaning against the pulpit and the other against a pillar. They were both Nazis, and Aziraphale was late.

"Mr Glozier? Mr Harmony?" Aziraphale looked at each of the men in turn and sought to embody the manner of proper English gentlemen, which was perhaps not the ideal way to greet proponents for a war against said English gentlemen.

Mr Harmony stood. "You are late - but don't worry." 

Mr Glozier moved in the shadows - the church was lit with only a few candles which, Aziraphale noted with disapproval, were meant for Advent. The Nazi lifted his chin. "You have the books we requested?"

Aziraphale held up the case in his hand and hurried the rest of the way towards the front of the church, setting it down in front of the men. Mr Harmony fiddled with the catch for a minute before looking at the angel with disdain.

"It doesn't open."

"Oh, I do apologise, it's rather stiff I'm afraid, ever so tricky to open at times..." Aziraphale leaned down until his face was almost level with the catch and poked it once or twice until it opened with a quiet _click_.

The men regarded him suspiciously, and Mr Harmony checked inside the bag. He glanced at his accomplice, and then at the angel, who was reciting its contents.

"Otwell Binns. Robert Nixon. Mother Shipton. Books of prophecy," he smiled, "all first editions. Exactly as requested."

"Where is the other book we asked you for?" said Mr Harmony, crossing his arms with a sour expression. "The Führer was quite certain that he needed it - the book of prophecies that are not just fool's guesswork."

Aziraphale's smile drained from his face. "Fool's guesswork is hardly what these masterpieces are! They're works of great intelligence, if a little... inaccurate - plainly false, some might say - in places. Well, in most places. In almost all places, actually -"

The men glared. Aziraphale cleared his throat.

"It doesn't exist," he said, quietly. 

"What?" said Mr Glozier, frowning at him.

"It doesn't exist," he repeated, louder this time. "Well, it does exist, but no one I know has ever been able to find it. It never sold a single copy, you see. People weren't so keen on prophecy books that didn't rhyme when it was first published. Believe me, I would love to get my hands on a copy of Agnes Nutter's Nice and Accurate Prophecies, but it would take more than a miracle for that to ever happen."

"Well, actually the Führer would like a miracle. And a gift from God, if you can manage it," drawled Mr Glozier. Mr Harmony chuckled. Aziraphale smiled nervously.

"I'm afraid not," said the angel. "But I did find a snippet from it in a catalogue."

Mr Harmony stopped laughing. "What was it?"

Aziraphale beamed the smile of one who has no idea what something means and is certain that the two men before him will have no idea too. "Prophecy 1,994: Do not believe the little blue bird."

The Nazis exchanged a look of badly-contained bewilderment. "We will make sure to... let the Führer know," said Mr Glozier.

"Little blue bird?" Mr Harmony muttered to Mr Glozier in German. "Are we sure this man is quite sane?"

"No," replied Mr Glozier. "He is selling books to Nazis in the middle of London. He is most decidedly not sane. I thought that was why we picked him."

" _I_ thought we picked him because he had first editions of all those prophecy books," said Mr Harmony.

"Well, yes, that too of course, but we needed someone stupid enough to _sell_ them to us, did we not?"

Aziraphale offered a slightly confused smile to the two Nazis as they conversed in a language they did not think the angel understood and waited for them to switch back to English again.

Finally, the two men turned back to Aziraphale. "Your payment," said Mr Harmony, producing a small drawstring bag and moving to hand it over. Halfway there, he dropped it and spent a moment hurriedly fumbling to recover both the bag and his pride. Aziraphale tried to hide a grin - he'd always wanted to humiliate a Nazi, and he was sure Head Office wouldn't mind _this_ little frivolous miracle. By the time Harmony had straightened again, Glozier had a gun pointed at Aziraphale.

"I would apologise," he said, "but you understand our reasons. Take heart, little man. Nobody will miss you."

Aziraphale frowned at Mr Glozier. "Well, that's not very nice, is it?"

Mr Glozier glanced over at Mr Harmony. "He doesn't seem very scared. Aren't people usually more scared when we point guns at them?"

The sound of high heels on stone was unmistakable. The Nazis raised their heads to see a young woman approaching, walking slowly as if to savour the moment, before stopping next to Aziraphale and raising her own gun.

Aziraphale grinned. "My double-dealing, dastardly Nazi acquaintances, meet Rose Montgomery. She's the one that set this up. We know everything about you and your evil dealings around London. Those books," he continued, sounding incredibly pleased with himself, "shall never reach your leader, and you two will spend the rest of the war in prison right here in Britain. Now -"

The woman, who had been trying to interrupt and failing to do so, managed to say, "Actually -" before Aziraphale carried on.

"We have planned everything and this building is surrounded. Come on! Come out!" Rose winced. "Rose, where _are_ your people?"

Mr Harmony grinned, and Mr Glozier laughed. It was building up to be a rather impressive maniacal laugh but he broke off coughing before it could reach fruition.

"This, Mr Fell," said Mr Harmony over the sound of his colleague's coughing fit, "is Fräulein Greta Kleinschmidt, a very dear ally of _ours_." He looked over at Mr Glozier, who was still coughing and was almost doubled over. "Are you alright?"

Mr Glozier waved a hand dismissively.

"Come now, boys," said Greta. "To the point."

Mr Harmony looked back at Aziraphale from Mr Glozier, a slightly worried expression on his face. "Yes, indeed. Where were we?"

There was a collection of noises from Mr Glozier, who was still trying to regain normal breathing ability. Greta translated; "Shooting the idiot bookseller."

Mr Harmony nodded. "Ah yes." When Mr Glozier held out the gun with a wavering hand, Mr Harmony took it quickly, and two barrels confronted the angel. He stared at them in shock.

It was at that moment that everyone inside the church heard the creaking of its old wooden door opening. It banged shut with perhaps a little more force than necessary, and from the shadows came a demon, dressed entirely in black, hopping from one foot to the other and hissing in pain as he walked down the aisle. 

"Ow! Ow! Ow! Ow!"

Mr Harmony, Mr Glozier, and Rose-who-was-actually-Greta stared at him as he approached.

"Crowley!" cried Aziraphale, trying and failing to hide his joy. "What on earth are you doing here?"

Crowley hopped up beside him. "Stopping you getting shot. I may be in the business of torment, but no one deserves _that_ paperwork." He paused, and glanced at the two with guns, and the third, who was finally straightening with a purple face. "Well... _almost_ no one." The three stared at him as he moved from one foot to the other, hissing and owing. "Consecrated ground," he explained. "It's like - ow, _ow_ \- you know what, never mind what it's like. It hurts, is the point."

"Are they working for you?" cut in Aziraphale, who was trying not to stare at Crowley's hat. “All of this is _your_ evil doing?”

"What? No, they're a bunch of half-witted Nazi spies doing evil all of their own volition," he said. "Nothing to do with me. Well, I mean, there was that one conversation with Hitler a few years back, but how was I supposed to know he was a megalomaniac intent on taking over the world?"

"Anthony J. Crowley," said Mr Glozier, his voice slightly hoarse. "Your reputation precedes you."

"That's Anthony Crowley?" said Mr Harmony, at the same time as Greta-not-Rose said, "Mr Fell is _friends_ with Mr Crowley?" and Aziraphale said, " _Anthony?_ "

Crowley glanced over at the angel. "You don't like it?"

"I didn't say that," Aziraphale said. "I'll get used to it."

"It's a shame you must both die now," said Greta, pointing her gun at Crowley. Neither angel nor demon seemed to notice.

"What does the J stand for?" Aziraphale asked.

"It's just a J, really," said Crowley, still shifting from foot to foot. He tried to lean against one of the pews but recoiled as if he had been burned. "I was thinking Jeremiah for a while, but it's a bit pretentious, don't you think? Then I was going to go John, but it seemed far too dull. So, just a J."

Aziraphale made a face, which he hastily turned into a smile. "Yes, quite," he said.

_"It's a shame you must both die now,"_ repeated Greta, waving the gun for emphasis.

Crowley looked at her, and said, "Ow." Then, "In about a minute, a bomb is going to fall conveniently - well, I suppose not so conveniently for you - directly upon this church, and you do not want to be around for that. You really won't enjoy dying, and what comes after blows that right out of the water. Speaking of which, who leaves holy water just lying around? Completely unprotected." He waved a hand at the church’s font. Aziraphale glared at him. "Anyway," he continued, "if you run very fast, you might escape. But you will have to run very fast _right now_ if you want to escape with all your limbs intact. I'm being nice here, warning you and everything." He tipped his hat at Aziraphale, and the glare morphed into an eye roll which was mostly there to hide the angel's smile.

Mr Harmony grinned. "You really expect us to believe that? We're not stupid enough to put ourselves in the path of our own bombs. They will fall on the East End tonight."

"Yes, so I have been told. It would take some force of Heaven or Hell to change that, wouldn't you think?" Crowley slid his sunglasses halfway down his nose and winked at Aziraphale. The Nazis squinted, trying to convince themselves that the man who stood in front of them did not have the eyes of a snake. "Perhaps a last-minute demonic intervention, something like that... sounds almost impossible, frankly." He looked at the Germans. "You're all wasting valuable running away time, I'm telling you." He looked back at his angel. "Of course, say that a bomb really were to land on this church in thirty seconds' time, it would take a _real_ miracle for my friend and I to survive it."

"There is no bomb falling here tonight," Mr Harmony insisted. Crowley pointed one finger up towards the ceiling as the distinctive whistle of a falling bomb began.

The three Nazis stared at each other and the ceiling. As the whistling swelled into a screeching, they began to panic and scramble towards the aisle. The moment seemed to crystallise and swell, the very air pressing down on the trio. Crowley raised an eyebrow, and everything went bang.

Dust filled the air. For a moment, Aziraphale couldn't see through it - then shapes began to emerge; rubble, broken pews, stone crosses cleaved apart and lying in the ash-strewn ground. Smoke smothered the stars above the ruins of the holy place. Then something moved, and Aziraphale tensed.

Crowley finished cleaning his glasses and put them back on. He ambled over to the angel, brushing stone powder off his shoulders. "Good miracle. Obviously. Wouldn't have wanted to mess that one up, would you?"

Aziraphale stepped over the remains of the pulpit's steps. "That was very kind of you, Crowley."

"Shut up."

"It was," said Aziraphale. "You saved me from death by Nazis, and all the paperwork that would follow."

Crowley turned away so that Aziraphale wouldn't see his smile. 

"Oh, the books!" the angel exclaimed. "They're all gone. Oh, and first editions and all..."

Crowley reached into the rubble to pry the leather case from the hand of one of the dead Nazis. "Little demonic miracle of my own," he said, offering it to Aziraphale. He took it from the demon, and had to resist the urge to hug him.

**Author's Note:**

> Thank you to Lobster, for all their contributions.


End file.
